UATP Workshop Goals

Some fifty astronomers and physicists will work together to identify materials derived from astronomy, astrophysics, and space science suitable to use in physics instruction. They will propose actions to produce useful teaching materials and suggest strategies to encourage their use in physics courses.  Possible actions might be to:

• outline possible physics texts with a strong astronomical flavor (at least one such text is now in preparation);
• paper text
• wiki text
• syllabus of physics study using web-based astronomy and space science materials
• construct, compile, and disseminate physics problems that use discovery data from astronomy to illustrate physics principles, e.g.;
• Andrea Ghez's beautiful orbits of stars around the Galactic center that reveal the black hole there or
• Dave Charbonneau's exoplanet data from Kepler
• describe themes for organizing a physics course around research results from astronomy and space science, e.g.
• the modern version of Newton's system of the world, our current perception of Earth's situation in the Universe,
• the physics that explains the properties of stars
• the physics students need to know to understand important parts of the astronomers' latest decadal study.
• prepare modules of instructional material based on discoveries or technologies of astronomy.
• different modules for different physics courses, e.g.,
• optics of multi-mirror telescopes
• infrared astronomy -- detectors and their physical properties
• Interferometry in several modes -- optical, radio, gravitational radiation LIGO
• nuclear physics of gamma-ray astronomy -- Fermi
• recruit authors to write articles describing the modules with the aim of publishing these in the American Journal of Physics special issue “Using Astronomy and Space Science Research in Physics Courses” to be published in the spring of 2012.